Movie Review: Alien: Romulus (2024)

Alien: Romulus (2024) co-written and directed by Fede Alvarez

A group of young adults decides to leave the mining colony because they have no future prospects other than dying in the mines. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation runs the planet and never lets anyone out of their contracts. The group spots a derelict space craft in a reachable orbit. Their only chance to infiltrate the spacecraft is Rain's (Cailee Spaeny) "brother," a Weyland-Yutani android called Andy (David Jonsson). With his corporate tech, he can access the ship's systems and take out the cryochambers. With those, they could make the nine-year interstellar flight to the closest free planet. Rain is a bit reluctant but goes along, especially since Andy was programmed by her dead father to do whatever is best for her. When they get to the ship, they find it's really a derelict space station that harbors scientific experiments that turned it into a derelict (though they don't recognize the danger right away). So bad things are on board, things that wake up once they dial up the internal thermostat to a livable temperature.

This movie is a throw back to the original Alien movie. It is a haunted-house thriller in space. This movie uses the same visual aesthetic, a future that's a bit grubby and uncomfortable. Nearly fifty years later, the special effects are more gruesome and lean into the body-horror and reproductive-horror that are staples of the Alien franchise. This film doesn't get into any deeper issues, it's just a fight for survival that depends more on grit and circumstance than intelligence. The young people are desperate enough to stay in a situation that is beyond their capabilities. Some rise to the occasion, some don't. The real question is if anyone can make it out alive. It's akin to the slasher genre but no viewer is going to root for the killer.

Nothing new is added to the Alien mythology which is good, given the track record of previous films that made a hash of adding more narrative and explanations. This film is just a straight-up horror. It works well in that vein if it does depend on gross-out moments too often. The actors do a good job at their roles though no one is outstanding. The ending shares a lot with the first Alien film, which is comfortingly familiar and disconcertingly unoriginal. 

Mildly recommended--if you are a fan of the series, this is enjoyable even if it doesn't add anything to the bigger picture. 

Movie Review: Alien3 (1992)

Alien3 (1992) directed by David Fincher

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is on another emergency evacuation vehicle after the conclusion of Aliens. This vehicle crash lands on a former prison planet. The prison was shut down but some of the prisoners who "got religion" decided to stay. They are still serving their sentences but only are supervised by a warden and a doctor, though the doctor has a suspicious past. In order for it to be an Alien movie, a creature stowed away on the vehicle and is now wandering around the prison, killing off people one by one as in the first film.

The movie is very derivative of the first two films. It tries to be a tense horror like the first film but is way below the high water mark the first film achieved. It tries to have a lot of action like the second film but the prison has no weapons and the humans are little more than cannon fodder for the alien. The humans have no way to fight other than a ridiculous Rube Goldberg scheme at the end. There's the usual evil corporate baddies who want the alien as a bio-weapon, a theme that has worn thin by this film. The introduction of a religious element could have been an interesting development but all the filmmakers show is fundamentalism and hypocrisy. Even those are sorely underdeveloped. Some of the visual effects are good but a lot of CG composite shots look like they were made a long time ago. The movie really has nothing to recommend it unless you're an Alien completest or a David Fincher (of Se7en, Fight Club, and The Social Network fame) completest.

Not recommended.

The Sequel was Better? Alien vs. Aliens

The Sequel Was Better? is a series of reviews looking at famous movies with sequels that are considered, rightly or wrongly, to be better than the original movies. Typically, sequels are a step down in quality, acting, and/or production value. But not always. See more such reviews here.

Alien is a famous science fiction film that spawned a long series of sequels, prequels, and crossover films. The first two films are generally considered the best of the series. The recent prequels have done well enough at the box office but viewers debate whether they add or subtract from the quality of the Alien universe. The following reviews include spoilers, so be forewarned.

Alien (1979) directed by Ridley Scott

The crew of the freighter ship Nostromo is awakened because the onboard computer received a seemingly undecipherable signal from a nearby planet. They reluctantly go to investigate. They find a derelict ship with a long dead gigantic humanoid pilot. The cave underneath is full of egg-shaped leathery balls. One of the crew examines a ball and the nascent life form inside bursts onto his face. He's brought back to the ship, against the wishes of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the ranking officer still on the ship. She's more concerned about quarantine rules than saving her fellow crew member. The science officer (Ian Holm) seems unconcerned about quarantine issues and overrides her decision. The whole problem of what they should do becomes much more urgent when an alien creature shows up and starts killing off the crew one by one.

This film is a fairly stripped down space horror film. The build up from the beginning is slow, establishing a lot of atmosphere and the ways the characters feel about each other. The more visceral horror starts maybe forty-five minutes into the film. Then the shock-gore and jump-scare scenes come at a steady and effective pace. The characters do not have enough resources to deal with the problem and they do the best they can, which quite often isn't good enough. The alien creature is creepy and menacing--it's often kept just out of view, following the "less is more" tactic famously used in Jaws.

The film adds in a jab at big corporations. The science officer turns out to be an android that was programmed to retrieve the alien from the planet and bring it back as a highly-marketable bio-weapon. The corporation sponsoring the Nostromo, Weyland Yutani, programmed the android to eliminate the crew if necessary. How they knew about the alien is not explained, though the science officer gives a creepy speech about how he admires the alien's pure killing ability and lack of moral limitations.

The movie hold up very well forty years later. The effects are mostly practical and still look believable (given the story context) today. The story is fairly simple, more of a setting for the horror. This film is entertaining if you can handle a medium-to-high level of gore.


Aliens (1986) written and directed by James Cameron

Ripley escaped from the Nostromo with a cat in a small life pod. The new film starts with her ship being picked up by scavengers. She's brought to a star base where she finds out its some sixty years later. Her daughter on Earth has lived her life and died two years ago. The Weyland Yutani rep (Paul Reiser) takes care of her though everyone thinks her story of an alien menace is implausible and untrue. In the meantime, the planet with the alien eggs has been colonized by terraformers. After Ripley is fired, the rep comes back to her because they've lost contact with the colony. He wants her to come with a squad of marines to investigate. She is very reluctant but goes along with the offer of a new job and some resolution to her post-traumatic stress disorder.

When the marines, Ripley, and the rep get to the planet, the colony base is abandoned but intact. They land and investigate. The empty halls of the colony show damage that corroborates Ripley's story, which doesn't really make anyone that much happier. They discover a lone survivor, a young girl named Newt (Carrie Henn) who has been hiding all the time. She knows about the monsters but won't say where her parents are. The marines patch into the colony's computer system and look for the locator badges on the colonists. They are all over at the atmosphere plant, grouped on a sub-level. The marines get all their high-tech weapons ready and go to check out the plant. They find a breeding ground for the aliens (the colonists' bodies being used as hosts). The marines also find some warrior aliens who attack them. The battle goes badly. They are barely able to retreat to the main colony where they hunker down and wait for the onslaught. They work desperately for a way to escape back to their orbiting ship.

The movie is, superficially, an action/horror sequel to the original movie. But a lot more is going on. The marines are high-tech warriors who are overwhelmed by the superior numbers of the low-tech aliens. So there's an overtone of America's failure in Vietnam. Ripley has a very mothering relationship with Newt, who can be seen as a substitute for her lost daughter (a character not mentioned at all in the first film). The aliens have an alien queen, who is also a sort of mother, though the worst sort. So there's a strong motherhood theme, something unexpected in an action/horror film. The corporate rep turns on the humans and wants to bring back samples, just like last time. Things don't work out well for him.

Let's look at some points of comparison:

• SCRIPT--Alien has a lot of atmosphere and hints at what's going on, though hardly any real details about the creature and its origin. Things just happen and viewers have to accept them as part of this new science fiction world being crafted. The sequel has a much more developed behavior patterns for the aliens, though their origin is still left mysterious. The script has a lot more going on for the humans, who are dealing with infighting and with keeping each other safe. The extra thematic elements (Vietnam parallel, motherhood) give the film a lot more depth than the first.
• ACTING--The first film has some very fine actors (Ian Holm who went on to be Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings series; Tom Skerritt who had many character roles; John Hurt later in The Elephant Man and Doctor Who) who give good performances. The sequel has fewer famous actors (Bill Paxton and Paul Reiser are the most famous) but makes good use of a cast of mostly unknowns. Holm is a much better surprise villain than Reiser. Sigourney Weaver stands out in both films. She was even nominated for an acting Oscar for Aliens, something unheard of at the time for a science fiction sequel.
• ADVANCES THE STORY/MYTHOLOGY--Details about the aliens are scant in the first film though the film makers do establish a fairly detailed world. Viewers learn a lot more about the aliens in the sequel, but not enough to take away their scariness and menace. Weaver's character has a lot more depth and background in the sequel. She grows as a person, becoming not just a survivor but a protector.
• SPECIAL EFFECTS--Both films use a lot of practical effects so they look less dated than more modern films using cutting edge CGI, which rapidly becomes dated-looking CGI as the years progress. Aliens is more ambitious and has a lot more action, requiring more effects. The alien spawning area in the terraforming station is a lot more horrible than the stuff in the first film.

Aliens was a better film than Alien, for sure. Alien is a very good movie and is still entertaining and worth watching even today. But Aliens is better. Someone could even watch Aliens first and not have a problem with lost bits of the story. The sequel is self-contained and does a great job presenting and expanding the world created in the first film.

The further sequels and prequels are not even close to as good as these films. I keep hoping they will come up with better movies set in this world but so far my hope is unfulfilled.

Book Review: Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Zombie Vampires by Harry Harrison and Jack C. Haldeman II

Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Zombie Vampires by Harry Harrison and Jack C. Haldeman II

Bill, the Galactic Hero, is a human space trooper who has three arms, some tusks, and is regrowing his right foot. His new assignment is as Military Policeman to the starship Bounty, which is taking a bunch of prisoners to the front line of the Chinger war. The ship is a bit older and doesn't have a proper drive system, which means the trip will take months and months. Luckily, everyone will have served their term and be put to fighting when the trip is over. Unluckily, the only other non-prisoners on the ship are Captain Blight, First Mate Christianson, and science officer (and also android) Caine, so the prisoners make up the rest of the crew. More unluckily, Captain Blight has an obsession with okra and has devoted most of the ship's resources to growing it on board. So much is grown that it is the sole food for the crew. If that wasn't enough to cause a mutiny on the Bounty (and don't think that joke doesn't come up again and again), the ship crashes on a planet with an abandoned communication facility. Well, not quite abandoned. The dried-out husks of the former facility staff are there along with a lot of literally blood-thirsty aliens who start out as cute little ducklings. Soon enough they'll be giant acid-spewing monsters hungry for the Bounty's crew.

The novel is a light-weight comedy version of the Alien movies. The crew has to explore the facility and get some supplies to repair the ship, all the while avoiding the monsters. The jokes are a mish-mash of pop culture puns (the Caine Mutiny gets mentioned and the three clones are called Larry, Moe, and Curly) and general silliness. I didn't find it very funny but it made me smile a few times. There is none of the horror from the Alien movies. While the characters are scared, the situations are never that suspenseful and nothing is described in any sort of detail.

I have to say the "zombie vampires" were a bit of a let-down for me. It reminds me of the movie Mystery Men, where the villain is named Casanova Frankenstein. That's a great name for a villain but they did nothing with it, i.e. there was nothing particularly Casanova or Frankenstein about the character. The aliens do suck blood and eventually turn people into mummies, but mummies aren't zombies or vampires.They should have called this book "Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Alien Franchise Ripoffs."

I will not be seeking out any more of this series.

Movie Review: Prometheus (2012)

Prometheus (2012) Directed by Ridley Scott

A lot of real and digital ink has been spilled over this film. For many, it was the most highly anticipated movie of the year, even over the likes of The Dark Knight Rises and The Hobbit. Expectations were perhaps too high, especially considering the result.

Ridley Scott has returned to the Alien universe with a story set some 30 years before the first Alien movie. The movie opens with a striking scene of a pristine landscape. The camera flies overhead, eventually coming to a cloaked figure running to a waterfall. In the distant sky a space ship can be seen. The figure takes off his robes to reveal a very buff and very pale hairless humanoid. He takes out a cup which he opens. It's full of some black ooze that seems to have things swimming around in it. He drinks it and it has a devastating effect on his body. He fall into the water as his body breaks down into its DNA components. From there, the story jumps to a Scottish cave circa 2089 AD, where anthropologists discover a 35,000 year-old cave painting that points the way to the adventure ahead.

The opening scene is a bit cryptic. Is this supposed to be the Prometheus myth brought to life? Is it about the creation of the xenomorph alien creature? After seeing the rest of the film and thinking about it for a day, the most plausible answer finally occurred to me. It was a fun mystery to ponder because enough information is eventually communicated in the film for the pieces to be put together. If only all the other questions had a similar, satisfying resolution.

Part of the challenge is that the film makers are planning on sequels to continue the story and the exposition. While it's nice that they are thinking ahead, it does a real disservice to this film because it comes off as an incomplete work. A lot of the questions like "Who made us?" and "What is our purpose?" are mentioned again and again with little to no resolution or even an indication of what direction they are going to take.

It almost seems like the real theme of the film is not "who made us and why" but "what is the proper relationship between creator and created?" At the beginning of the story, the main character, Elizabeth Shaw, wears a cross and we see in a flashback/dream that her father was a Christian and believed in the Christian afterlife. She remains attached to her father's cross, though whether it is from sentimentality for her father or for true faith in the Christian God is ambiguous. Characters in the movie talk about her as a "believer" or one with "faith." The movie itself seems to lean toward the sentimentality. She is searching for her creators in the "Engineers" who left the cave paintings pointing to the remote planet where the movie's main action takes place. She assumes they created mankind and, through the cave painting, has invited us to come visit. She hopes to find out the answers to why we (humans) are here. It's a quest for ultimate knowledge, to be, if not an equal, at least an intimate with one's creator (what the gods were punishing the mythic Prometheus for). There's no explanation of how this fits in with Christian faith from her, anyone else, or the film as a whole. She is optimistic that things will work out well.

The other characters have a different view of things. Several of them say that children always want to kill their parents. Not replace, kill. The theme is ubiquitous: The android talks about destroying creators and the disappointment of finding out you were created just to see if you could be created. Another daughter wants to see her father gone for selfish reasons. Shaw can't get pregnant, which seems to grant her immunity from the pessimism of the others. In the end, though, she is brought down to their level. The finale has her taking off for another planet in pursuit of the "Engineers" not with hopeful wonder but more with demands for answers.

A lot of other ambiguities crop up with no logical explanation at all. The most inexplicable is the android David's motivation. At times he works for the corporation's interests; at other times he seems to be working for the "Engineers;" at still other times he seems to be working in favor of creating the Aliens. There's no suggestion that he is malfunctioning or that he is being reprogrammed. His actions seem quite random. I kept hoping for some reasonable explanation but another random alliance happens toward the end of the movie. The problem definitely is not with the performance. Michael Fassbender is the one unanimous point of praise in various reviews; he portrays the robot's actions with the sleek efficiency of an emotionless automaton. The problem is a script that doesn't know what the character is supposed to do other than to move the plot along.

All of the other performances were good. The design, atmosphere, and mood of the film were well executed, building up tension and horror. If only the plot were more coherent or the future plans had some sort of form the viewer could grasp onto, it would be a much more satisfying film.

I have to admit, I would watch a "director's cut" of this film if it ever comes available, to see if the many holes can be patched and the flaws fixed to create a more coherent and complete whole. It's an intriguing but seemingly unfinished film.

Oh, yeah--it's also super-gory, definitely for adults only.

Here's some other interesting comments:

Steven Greydanus quotes a great line from another review and gives his own thoughts.

Catholics in a Small Town talk about it around 25 minutes in on their 218th episode.

Interesting archeological/mythological perspective from Pop Classics.

Crazy pro-Prometheus blog posting here.

Crazy anti-Prometheus blog posting here.

The point of all these links is that the movie has so many blank spots that the viewer can fill in any number of possible interpretations or assessments.